Nullarbor – Weebubbie Cave – September 2013

Weebubbie Cave … an amazing pool, in the depths of the earth under desert, if you were in the area, this was a “must do”.  Show-cased recently on something like Catalyst, it was probably the main reason Wendy and I decided to go on the Nullarbor trip, the film footage was spectacular.Despite the sign, all was well, Natalie had organised permits for us, so we were good to go.  This cave is very close to Eucla, and in fact there are the remains of a pump house as they used to pump the water out of the cave and feed down to the Eucla township.  Would have been very hard water, coming out of a limestone cave.  We set up camp after we arrived and were primed to cave the next day.

Me abseiling into the sink hole. Photo courtesy of Dirk Stoffels

Caving overalls courtesy of Jeff B, and our rope anchored to the chassis of the car, we were set to abseil into the sink hole which is your first indication that there’s a cave there.

Not a very big abseil, and not a difficult climb out. Photo: Dirk Stoffels

The abseil isn’t very long, and I’m sure if you wanted to you could down-climb but probably abseiling was the safest way.  Once we did the abseil we were down about 20m into an area not quite a sink hole, but the remains of where the rocks had fallen into the cave beneath it, not quite a sink hole.  The rocks sloped down until you came to an opening into the cave where you climb down a small ladder and then walk along yet more rocks, always going down.

Looking down to where you enter the pool. Photo courtesy of Dirk Stoffels

As I was walking down my headlamp just wasn’t bright enough and I walked down these white limestone rocks thinking that we had still a long way to go, not realising that I was at the edge of the water, the water is that clear, no sediment, just crystal clear and an amazing blue.  There was a small section where two pools were separated by a pile of rocks, we dumped our gear here to look around.

Looking down the length of the pool. Photo courtesy Dirk Stoffels

The pool is almost the size of an Olympic pool, very, very big and down the end of it (where you can see the light), is where cave divers go to go further down the underground river.

Ken in the tyre and me hanging on in the pool. Photo courtesy of Dirk Stoffels

You couldn’t not have a swim in the pool.  The water was not really cold and had a really high salt content, so you could easily float around or swim.  Obviously this was a pretty popular place because someone had left a big tyre there for swimming (or maybe the cave divers used it for some unknown reason), in any event, we used it to go up to the far end and I swam back.

The climb out from the pool across the limestone rockfall. Photo: Dirk Stoffels

This shot gives you an idea of the magnitude of both the rock fall (all this rock has fallen from the roof of the cave) and the actual chamber.

Me on the prussic out, in hindsight, you could probably have climbed it! Photo courtesy of Dirk Stoffels

Once we retraced our steps, we then had to prussic out, which we all did, but honestly, you could have scrambled up the rocks.  What a great day caving!